Scripture: Ephesians 5:1-14
Today’s sermon is Part 9 of our current series in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, and it’s called, “Therefore Be Imitators of God.” And I want to answer three main questions related to today’s scripture. Number One, Is Paul Asking for the Impossible? Number Two: W.W.J.D? And Number Three: What Is the Remedy for Sinful Desire?
But let’s begin with the question, “Is Paul asking for the impossible?”
When my son Townshend was a little boy of three or four years old, he was—like all three of my kids—incredibly cute, incredibly endearing… in his own unique way. For instance, he always wanted to imitate me. So he watched me shave in the mirror, and he wanted to do that, too. So we bought him a toy razor one Christmas. He would climb onto the bathroom counter. I would put shaving cream on his face. And he would “shave.”
And cutting the grass! He watched me do that and wanted to do that, too! So we bought him a Fisher-Price toy lawnmower. He would follow me around the yard as I cut the grass. I’m tempted to say he “outgrew” his enjoyment of cutting the grass when he got older, but he always had a good attitude about doing it—better than I did! At least until he ran over a yellow jacket hive buried in the ground. He got stung a few times. So we treated the stings, and he went back in the house.
Except there was still a patch of grass that needed to be cut. So I cranked the lawnmower—intending to finish the job that Townshend started… and I got stung by a couple of yellow jackets!
The irony isn’t lost on me… because I love yellow jackets! But it goes to show that when you love yellow jackets, that love doesn’t prevent them from causing great pain.
Regardless, children often enjoy imitating their parents… They want to. It comes natural. And parents should aspire to be people worth imitating!
And so it makes sense when Paul says, in verse 1, “be imitators of God.” I mean, why not? We have a heavenly Father who is always perfect and perfectly loving… And Jesus in the gospels shows us, in the most human of terms, what this kind of imitation looks like when it’s lived out. Since we are children of our heavenly Father, why wouldn’t we want to imitate him?
But isn’t it funny that no one, even us preachers, seems to talk about “imitating God”? Trusting in God, sure… All the time… It wouldn’t surprise you for a moment if I said, from the pulpit, “You need to trust in God.” But if I said from the pulpit—without showing you scripture first—“You need to imitate God,” how do you think you would respond?
Probably by saying, “That’s impossible.” That’s like saying, “If you want to be a great golfer, imitate Scottie Scheffler.” Um… okay… but I can’t do that! Impossible.
But is it?
That’s the question I need to explore in this first point.
Let’s first notice that this isn’t the only place in the New Testament where Paul says something like this. How about, for instance, 1 Corinthians 11:1? “Be imitators of me,” Paul writes, “as I am of Christ.” Remember, of course, that Jesus is God—God from God, light from light, true God from true God, as the creed says—Jesus is God in the flesh. So when Paul says he’s an imitator of Christ, that’s the same as saying he’s an imitator of God.
But wow! Would I ever have the boldness to say, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”? I’m afraid people might say, “You’re a very cheap imitation!”
Just a few nights ago—last Wednesday—the rookie Bronny James took the court for his team, the L.A. Lakers, with five minutes left to play. The Lakers were getting blown out by the Cavaliers. LeBron James was on the bench with all the other starters. But Bronny James came in and he made a 14-foot basket, his first basket in the league!
And no one was surprised, of course… No one will be surprised if—for all we know—Bronny James ends up becoming great at basketball! No one will be surprised if he ends up being a “chip off the old block.” Indeed, no one will be surprised if he ends up “imitating” his father and his style of play and becomes very successful.
In fact, many basketball fans will be disappointed if Bronny doesn’t end up being a superstar player like his dad!
Why? Because he’s LeBron James’s child!
So… with that in mind, is it a surprise that Paul tells to to imitate God, who is our Heavenly Father?
But maybe you say, “Yes but… It’s not the same. After all, if LeBron James had instead adopted Bronny, and Bronny wasn’t tall and didn’t inherit other genetic traits from his father, it might be very surprising if he went on to become great at basketball! Even if LeBron spent a lot of time teaching his son the game of basketball, that alone may not overcome physical limitations. Nature versus nurture and all that!”
No… Unlike Bronny, we are only adopted children.”
Well, that’s true… We’re adopted. But that’s not all we are. Remember: Something supernatural happened when we put our faith in Christ: We were born again. We received the Holy Spirit. We were changed inside and we received power to become like Christ… power to be sanctified… power to become imitators of God.
And that’s Point Number One…
Point Number Two… W.W.J.D?
Unless you were living under a rock about twenty-five years ago, you know the meaning of those initials, W.W.J.D. It’s a question, and it stands for what? “What would Jesus do?” The question was first famously posed in a novel called In His Steps by Charles Sheldon in the late 19th century. But a hundred years later those initials were all over the place. You may have worn them on a friendship bracelet… or on a T-shirt. Maybe you had them on a coffee mug or a bumper sticker or a piece of jewelry. And maybe you still do. That’s perfectly okay.
Not that anyone asked me, but I’m not sure that’s the best question Christians should ask themselves… I think there’s a better question. Of course, the question I would have Christians ask instead can’t be represented so neatly by a mere four letters, as you’ll see in a moment… so it’s not like I’m getting rich or anything selling T-shirts.
But… before we get to my question, I want us to notice two words or phrases in verse 1.
The first word is the very first word of verse 1: “Therefore”… I made this point a couple of weeks ago… When I talked about verse 1 of chapter 4: I asked, “What’s the therefore there for?” I said that whenever we see the word “therefore,” we have to go back to previous verses to see what the author has just been talking about… Because the word “therefore” means that what he’s just been talking about is connected to what he’s about to say. And the same is true in verse 1 of today’s scripture.
Paul doesn’t merely say, “Be imitators of God,” he says, “Therefore be imitators of God.” So we look at what he’s just been saying, for instance in verse 32 of the previous chapter: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
So, as we talked about in last week’s sermon, Paul is discussing behaviors that ought to characterize our Christian life. Among them, he says, we are to “forgive one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
Among other things, this means that one way that we “imitate God” is by forgiving one another. Another way, according to verse 32, is by being kind and tenderhearted. Another way, according to verse 31, is by “putting away” bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and all malice.” Another way, according to verse 28, is by not stealing. Another way, according to verse 25, is by speaking truthfully, and avoiding “sins of the tongue.”
In fact, the whole previous paragraph, from verses 25 to 32, describe characteristics of a person who imitates God.
But just for a moment I want us to focus on verse 32 and that phrase about forgiving “one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
As God in Christ forgave you. Those are the key words.
So what, according to Paul in verse 32, is the motivation for forgiving others? We might say, “Well, Christ forgave others, so we must imitate Christ by forgiving others, too. Makes sense.
We might say, “Steve hurt me”—and if your name is Steve, I’m not talking about you, I promise! But we might say, “Steve hurt me. But Christ forgave Steve. Therefore I must imitate Christ by forgiving Steve, too.” That’s what it looks like to imitate Christ, or imitate God—same difference. I see how Christ forgives others, and I do the same.
Simple, right?
But that’s not quite what it says… It doesn’t say, “Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave others.” It says, “Forgive one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
In other words, before you can fulfill this command—before you can forgive anyone the way Jesus forgives—you must know, in your heart, from personal experience, what it’s like to be forgiven.
For years, before Christ saved you from your sins, you likely put up a good front. For years, you tried to keep so many of your sins hidden. But you knew they were there. And they were deadly. And you rebelled against Christ your King in a million-and-one different ways. And when you first heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, you felt inwardly convicted that if God were going to forgive a sinner like you—a big “if”—that it would take an act of sheer grace on God’s part to do so… that you could do absolutely nothing to earn it or deserve it or pay it back… that even your best and most righteous deeds were like “filthy rags,” as the prophet Isaiah put it. 1 You may not have felt as if you were the “foremost” of sinners, as Paul described himself 2, but you were close enough… And you were deeply ashamed!
But then you heard that knock, knock, knock on the door of your heart, as Jesus describes it… you heard his voice calling you by name. 3 You couldn’t believe it! Jesus was calling you, of all people! Even a sinner like you! Jesus was offering his gift of forgiveness and eternal life to you. How is that possible?
But Jesus our Good Shepherd found you, his lost sheep, and forgave you… And when he did, it was as if he put you on his shoulders, carried you home, and threw a big party! “‘Rejoice with me,’ he said, ‘for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” 4
So much joy in heaven when you received this gift of forgiveness! In fact, scripture says that Jesus endured the suffering of the cross “for the joy that was set before him.”5 And part of that joy, believe it or not, was the joy he felt by having you with him for all eternity!
So, yes, by all means, Jesus forgives others. And by all means, you should imitate him. But you do so knowing that you yourself have been forgiven… and you do so knowing what it cost Jesus—God in the flesh, the Second Person of the Trinity—to do so. Yet he paid that cost and said, in so many words, “It was totally worth it… It was totally worth it to find you… to gain you… to have you with me forever.”
How could you not want to imitate someone like that?
In case you think I’m making too much of those six words at the end of chapter 4—“as God in Christ forgave you”—I need you to pay attention to a second word in verse 1: “Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children.”
The word is beloved… Paul could have said, “Therefore be imitators of God as children.” Or “Because you are children, imitate God your Father—as children will naturally do.” But again, that’s not what he says. He says, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.”
Beloved…
One incredibly important word… To be a “beloved” child, after all, means knowing that you are loved. God showers his love on you and you know it! From that place of love, imitate your Father and the way he loves…
My point is, scripture doesn’t merely say, “Christ treats others with kindness, so imitate him, go and do likewise. Christ shows others his tenderhearted love, so imitate that love, go and do likewise. Christ forgives others, so imitate him, and go and do likewise.”
To be clear, Jesus does say, “Go and do likewise.” In exactly one place in the gospels. Do you know where? At the end of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. After describing the costly love and mercy of the Samaritan, Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.”
But that parable isn’t only, or perhaps even mostly, about the “going and doing”: It doesn’t simply say, Be like the Good Samaritan. No… Before we identify with the hero of the story, the Samaritan, we’re supposed to identify with the villains—the priest and the Levite…
What is it within us, after all, that makes us so much like them, that prevents us from loving this injured victim on the side of the road. “Why don’t I love my neighbor as I love myself… like the Samaritan does? Why don’t I have compassion like this Samaritan? Why am I so self-centered and self-absorbed, unlike this Samaritan. When would I ever say to an innkeeper, ‘I’ll pay whatever this stranger owes, until he is healed. My tab will be open until then’?
“How could I possibly love someone like that!”
And when we ask these sorts of questions—when we see how far short of God’s love we fall—suddenly those words of Paul in Romans 7 resonate with us:
But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin. 6
A slave to sin! Trapped… Powerless… in need of rescue!
Suddenly we feel a lot like that desperately injured victim on the side of the road—tortured and tormented by our enemy, the devil, helpless to save ourselves… facing death—eternal death in our case…unless or until our Savior, Jesus, comes to rescue us at an infinite cost to himself—a price only He can pay… yet one that He pays gladly. And so he rescues us, just like the Good Samaritan rescues this man in the parable.
That kind of love melts our hearts!
Only after having experienced this heart-melting love of Christ for ourselves does Jesus then say, “Go and do likewise.”
And of course the primary means through which our Lord meets us, and speaks these loving words to us, is through the words of this amazing book, God’s Word, holy scripture. And there are many people in our church—having read the entire Bible for the first time in their lives over this past year as part of our “Journey Through the Bible”… there are many people who know the love of Christ more deeply and intimately because they committed themselves to reading God’s Word last year!
And just last Thursday night, at our church’s Trunk or Treat, in which hundreds upon hundreds of children and their families experienced at least a small measure of Christ’s love, our church arranged for the Gideon’s to give away 642 pocked-sized New Testaments. If even a small fraction of those 642 read for themselves the Good News of Jesus Christ, who knows how their lives will be changed?
So we praise God for that event!
So… let’s get back to what I said earlier about “W.W.J.D?”: Instead of asking, “What would Jesus do?” how about we ask something like this: “Based on what you know and have experienced, personally, from your saving relationship with God through Christ, what would Jesus have you do?” Way too many letters! How about shortening it to W.W.J.H.Y.D.? “What would Jesus have you do?” Nah! Still too many letters! Not as catchy!
But that’s Point Number Two.
Point Number Three: What Is the Remedy for Our Sinful Desires?
Early in my pastoral ministry, when I was an associate pastor at a large church, I was eager to bond with a group of young men about my age—thirty-somethings. And I had become friends with at least one or two of them. And I was excited when they invited me out to dinner and a movie… these were about a dozen young men from the church.
And the movie they picked was a tasteless, raunchy R-rated comedy whose name I won’t mention, because I don’t want to tempt any of you to see this movie… because no one needs to see a movie like this, trust me… And I’m not proud to say this, but I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s with HBO on a cable box at home. So I wouldn’t be shocked by tasteless, raunchy R-rated comedies. I saw plenty of those when I was a teenager, unfortunately! And God forbid anyone think me a “prude.” I was the “cool” pastor back then, relatively young at the time. So of course I went with these men. And as we walked out of the theater when the movie was over, they couldn’t stop apologizing to me… Like, “We’re sorry we invited you, our pastor, to go with us!”
Even at the time I didn’t like the double-standard… and I still don’t. They wouldn’t be apologizing to one another if I weren’t there… They only felt embarrassed because their pastor happened to be there! That’s not right! That’s hypocritical.
If it’s bad for their pastor to watch—which they knew it was—then guess what? It’s also bad for them to watch. If it’s bad for my soul, it’s bad for theirs!
Anyway, I repented. I would have handled that whole situation much, much differently today.
Paul himself didn’t know about raunchy, tasteless Hollywood movies in the first century, but it’s not hard to see that his words in today’s scripture rule them out for us Christians. Listen to this excerpt of Paul’s words here:
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving… Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.
So I was wrong to go to that movie.
But here’s what I need you to notice: Paul doesn’t merely say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do the other thing…” In fact, by using the word “covetousness”—by connecting these other sins to the sin of covetousness—he’s really giving us an insight into why we shouldn’t do these things: Because by doing these sinful things, we are really trying to satisfy the deepest longings of our souls with things that can’t satisfy us.
So it’s not like God is trying to take some enjoyable thing away from us and spoil our fun. Not even close!
He’s offering us himself and saying, “Find your satisfaction, your joy, your fulfillment, your peace, you contentment, your pleasure, your glory in me alone. I’m enough for you! You don’t need anything or anyone else. Whatever you truly need, I’ll supply it. You don’t need to look outside of your relationship with me. I know what you need. I made you! Trust me! I’m enough for you! Only I can give you lasting happiness.”
Look at verse 4 again: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.”
Instead let there be thanksgiving. In other words, replace all that stuff I’m taking away from you with something better: “thanksgiving.”
What does “thanksgiving” have to do with anything?
Because… when you “taste and see that the Lord is good”7; when you learn to “delight yourself in the Lord” and find that he “gives you the desires of your heart”8; when you find in Christ alone your “good portion, which will not be taken away from you,”9 when you find a treasure in Christ in comparison to which every other treasure in the world is nothing more than “garbage,”10 well… then your heart overflows with thanksgiving…
And when it does…? “The things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”